At Ridgewood High School, the only secondary school in its eastern Ohio district, seven teenagers developed Reading Reimagined, an AI-powered literacy app designed to support struggling readers through personalized stories, vocabulary supports, comprehension tools and accessibility features. Earlier this year, the platform earned national recognition through the Presidential AI Challenge, a federal initiative that forges public-private partnerships with K-12 students.
AI TO DEEPEN LEARNING, NOT AVOID IT
According to Lester McCurdy, an educator at Ridgewood, literacy quickly rose to the top of the list. His wife teaches fourth grade in the district, and McCurdy said more than half of those students were on reading improvement plans. From there, students in his own class saw a local challenge they might address with AI.
"A lot of it was just seeing that big problem in our community, and we wanted to do something to combat that," Joyce said.
What began as a simple choose-your-own-adventure reading experience evolved into a more sophisticated platform, according to Joyce and another recent graduate, Addison Lahmers. They said they interviewed teachers across the district, studied literacy standards, researched the science of reading, and built supports for vocabulary development, reading comprehension and students with dyslexia. One classmate with a disability helped shape the software’s accessibility features, while others focused on coding, communications and content design.
Joyce and Lahmers said they tested multiple platforms, abandoned failed approaches, struggled with content moderation and learned how to communicate effectively with AI tools. To build Reading Reimagined, students had to deeply learn literacy subject matter: reading standards, vocabulary instruction, comprehension, phonics, dyslexia supports, and science of reading principles.
"You just have to be really specific," Joyce said.
Dr. Bryan Raach, director of student services at Ridgewood Local School District, said learning happened throughout the process as students debated AI ethics, collaborated with one another and solved problems big and small. In many ways, he said, their experience was the opposite of the common narrative that students use AI to bypass learning.
As the project went on, students began to see AI differently: Rather than viewing it as something that they would use to avoid work, Joyce and Lahmers said they experienced AI as a tool that could help them create things they otherwise would not build.
"We could make a change,” Lahmers said. "It's nice to be able to have a say in what is being produced.”
TEACHER MINDSET TRUMPS EXPERTISE
One of the most striking aspects of the project was that the students weren’t recruited from computer science pathways, and that their teacher also did not have a background in AI.
"The person and their mindset prepares you to teach this class," Raach said. "You have to have the right person."
McCurdy described his class as operating more like a startup than a traditional classroom. Students identified a problem, researched it, built a solution, tested it, gathered feedback and refined their work. Moreover, he said his role was less about providing answers than about creating conditions where students could discover answers themselves.
At one point, he said students found themselves waiting for outside technical support. Instead of pausing, they began using AI to evaluate potential solutions and troubleshoot problems on their own.
That mindset, McCurdy said, reflects a broader lesson about AI in education.
"If you're going to let AI do your work, you're training it to replace you," he said. "If you're using it to get yourself better, then it becomes a powerful tool."
THE VALUE OF PARTNERSHIPS
Raach said external partnerships were essential to creating Reading Reimagined. He credited Ohio-based AI company AI OWL, Intel, and AI and cloud company NWN for helping Ridgewood facilitate an AI curriculum and provide students with opportunities that would have been difficult to create internally.
NWN's Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Gilman said conversations about AI in education often focus too heavily on risks and restrictions, and district leaders should instead think about experiences and pathways tech can help forge for students.
"I see AI as an access and opportunity problem to solve in this setting, not as a compliance and a guardrail," he said.
For Gilman and Trace Johnson, president and co-founder of AI OWL, the Ridgewood project demonstrates what can happen when students are given access, support and meaningful challenges. Notably, neither credited technology itself as the primary driver of success; Johnson instead pointed to local leadership.
"They had a Brian Raach and they had a Lester McCurdy," Johnson said, adding that outside partners should not attempt to replace educators who understand student needs, local challenges and, of course, the intricacies of one’s pedagogy in ways outside organizations cannot.
AI IN RURAL APPALACHIA
Raach repeatedly framed Ridgewood's experience through the lens of rural education. Innovation can be difficult in Appalachian Ohio, he said, because of funding limitations, staffing challenges and geographic isolation — yet the students' success challenged assumptions about where AI innovation can happen and who gets to participate in it.
The students eventually presented Reading Reimagined to technology executives, senators and other leaders in Washington, D.C., which Raach said one student deemed the most meaningful experience of her high school career.
Joyce and Lahmers both said the most valuable gain from the project was heightened confidence — in presenting their work, solving problems, speaking with industry leaders and, in the end, knowing their ideas are worthy of attention and follow through.
“We’re capable of doing this,” Joyce said. "It doesn't matter that we're girls from a tiny school.”
Neither student plans to pursue a career in tech, but both said developing the literacy platform revealed how AI coursework is not only for future programmers, but that it can also help students become stronger communicators, collaborators and problem-solvers.
"We've spent three years under the thought experiment [worried] about all the things that could go wrong [with AI]," Johnson said. "I think that maybe, just maybe, we could spend just a little bit of time thinking about what might go right."
